I had read many similar comments about the thief. Once I settled with a gameplay I enjoyed it was okay. I just didn't understand what was offered in return for the squishiness and clumsy initiative mechanics. Your PvP example and higher level dungeons might be the missing blocks of my limited experience.

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"You are forcing me to be the voice of reason. And thatís not a good look for me!" - B.Stinson

I have always played a Thief in other games, especially WoW, where I was a PvP fool. I used to use my Rogue as a backstab/ambusher way before it was ever cool for PvP. I could almost always 2 shot clothe wearers, so I just used to stealth behind enemy lines and find their priests and mages, and stab stab and run. Good times.

I am looking at making a thief and using dual daggers and dual pistols. I played with them some during BWE's and really enjoyed them until I ran outta initiative. I think I want to make a build with 30/30/10 Trickery, Crit, Deadly Arts. Building with skills that help regenerate initiative, and lengthen my conditions applied. I am gonna play a Charr, just for style.....

I didn't play in the BWE but I've been maining a Thief since launch and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

I don't really feel squishy at all, I don't like the term tank, because I don't tank, but with a mix of blind, and stealth, an with no cool down on skills, I'm able to handle things quite well and can quickly stealth and heal up, use blind and backstab to kill things quickly.

My usually use D/P and SB, with the #3 skill you close the distance fast, then use #5 to blind, and #2 to leap through the smoke field and land in stealth, then either backstab or get away if injured. I've also been using shadow refuge for an added heal and support, with it traited to give regen to allies.

The main thing with the thief is it is fast. It feels so much faster than other classes with no cooldowns. I know you nee to manage ini, but it seems to regen fast, and you have a lot of flexibility.

I agree, Radu, a very fast paced class. And don't forget dodging and evade skills, because that is a huge part of thief longevity. I'm actually finding myself enjoying dual pistols a lot for soloing, and caltrops is possibly my best friend.

Combo finishers! You have lots of them and if you run a dagger/x with a shortbow, you have all of them. With dagger/dagger all you miss out on is blast. Learn what combos with what, or just do the finisher whenever you see a field and you will see fun stuff happen. Most of the combos come from other players, but you can create four different types yourself. Smoke screen can come from various sources, but most noticeably your /p 5 slot ability--the smoke screen hangs around for a bit so you can constantly keep your foe blinded with those projectile finishers, or you can steal with a leap (if you are d/p). Dark comes from shadow refuge, which is really nifty because you get a heal, you are stealthed, and with a whirl or a projectile, you get another heal from the steal health. Poison is obviously poison cloud which lets you spread weakness and poison to everybody. My favorite though, is Throw Gunk, which nets you an ethereal field which gets you chaos armor and confusion based on your finisher. Yay combos!

True that. I don't think I've ever used it though, I can't imagine it being any more useful there.

As for underwater, I think it is just a hard adjustment. I can't say I hate it, because I'm not very good at it. However, I can say that I don't feel like I'm playing a thief when I'm underwater, but maybe with practice there is more of the thief feel down there.

Harpoon gun 3 and spear 4 give you some mobility, but indeed the lack of AoE makes some underwater fights harder. Kiting melees is easy enough, although those krait that pull you can make that enervating too.

I roll dual dagger on my thief [keep wanting to type rogue out of habit] and have yet to find a real downside to it. Thanks to the 5th slot when it comes to running away I can simply slap anything with the offhand dagger and vanish into stealth at any time giving me 3 seconds to run to safety. The 25% movement speed sigil definitely helps with that as well. I managed to run across 3 zones of Orr to my next story target without fighting a single creature just by stealth slapping everything as I approached it. It does cut into the loot you get but you travel 10 times faster and with a much lower risk of death. Added bonus: You're not a jerk who's aggro-slinging mobs onto other people just trying to stay alive when you sprint through a zone.

As far as underwater goes, if you've got a spear you can 1v1-1v3 anything with very little physical damage. A simple rotation of spamming the 5th slot until you're down to 3 initiative then switching to slot 3 and blocking/countering every move until your initiative is back. Rinse and repeat. Using that I took out a Veteran krait and his two sidekicks while only losing 10% of my health. It takes a bit of practice to get the timing right on the blocks, once in a while you've have to cut one short in order to stop the next attack, but once you get the hang of it underwater is soggy cake.

For all our WvW thieves, this might be an interesting read. I've used that build for a few months now and I really fell in love with S/D: with Infiltrator's Strike and your Shadowstep utility you can warp in and out of battle on demand. If you haven't played S/D in PvP yet, you should give it a try